Category: Uncategorized
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Big Data, medicine and Dr Gregory House
I am a big fan of House. BIG FAN ! I guess what I really like is the infectious curiosity of Dr Gregory House and the very extreme personalities of the characters at this clinic. In my overly simplistic understanding of medicine, there are two parts to it – diagnosis and treatment. And our Dr…
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Inflection point in Global mobile sales – Q2 2013
The latest Gartner Mobile sales reports are clearly saying one thing – the 2nd quarter of 2013 has been the inflection point in Global Mobile sales. Feature phone sales were lower than Smart phone sales for the first time ever. This is big, as it is a sure sign of how mobile usage trends would…
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Bell Curve and the Appraisal Process
Imagine that a football team needs a manager/coach, someone who can motivate the players and help them deliver much more than they ever imagined they could. Now imagine that a seasoned HR manager somehow lands this job, someone who has been a big fan of bell curves and the other smarts we have grown so…
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Mobile Money Facts and Figures
Opportunity Scale 1.8 billion people globally have mobile phones but no bank acocunts (World Bank) Success Stories/Adoption Figures 20% of Kenya’s GDP moves on mPESA (2013) 20 nations in the world where more than 10% of the population has used mobile money in the past year. 15 of those countries are in Africa (Global…
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Automobile recalls in Indian Market
May 2013: Updated with the new Nissan Micra & Sunny recall data. ———————————————————————————————————————- Aug 2012: The recent and much covered recall of the Ford Figo, sparked a lunch debate – which is the most re-called brand of car manufacturers? We did some quick Googling and here’s what we could find out: Manufacturer Brand Year/Month Issue…
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Obsessing over finer details
I have heard way too many stories about how some of the most iconic brands were built by obsessing over details, by ensuring that the customer was kept at the center of it all. And I am sure that this has over the years been documented, researched and made its way into the board rooms…
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Next Phase of Search Engine Wars
A close friend of mine, just started his own venture after spending over a decade in the banking industry. He still goes to his venture’s web site by going to Google first and then typing his venture’s name in the search bar. No he is not doing it for some convoluted SEO impact. This is…
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If everyone treated us like our mobile operators
TataDoCoMos recent ad campaigns have been very powerful, to say the least. Kudos to the agency and the marketing teams who could communicate and highlight the pain-points so well. I saw the ad recently and it brought back some recent experiences with the biggest brand of them all – Airtel. I have done my share…
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Where’s the Cupid in our Education System
I was reading this incredible story yday and Dandu bhai’s one line stuck a chord with me – I realized for the first time what it meant to understand concepts and solve problems using first principles (and not by memorizing) I was immediately back in 1993 when I was getting introduced to the concepts of…
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Offline to online
Offline + online connect, was and remains an interesting area for internet innovation – simply because in our real-lives we consume most brands, products and services (remove information from this list for a moment) in an offline heavy way. The real challenge that most brands face is that while these “offline consumers” are heavy consumers…
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The Digital Insurer
Going Digital is no longer a choice that insurers have, its something they need to do and now. What insurers need to understand is how to embrace digital in their individual markets and what goals to strive for in each phase of the roll-out. Given below is a collection of articles & essays I have…
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Next phase of digital marketplaces
Internet adoption has seen the evolution of some usual suspects across most geographies and one of the key category is that of Digital Marketplaces. A portal which successfully brings together the supply and demand side forces together. In India we have seen the growth of such marketplaces for jobs (Naukri, Monster etc) , marriages (Bharatmatrimony),…
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Corporate Culture Localization
Many global companies have adopted an approach of customizing their products to suit the local needs. McDonalds came up with some Indian burgers to suit the desi palate, Suvidha was Citibank’s experiment at serving the unique Indian market, General Motors shifted the driving wheel from left to right (and forgot to move the wiper and…
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Celebrity Endorsements Work
Had a very interesting chat with the guy who runs the sports-shop at the Sports Complex where I go for my regular squash. I noticed that Nadal and Federer were no longer there on his wall and all one could see were Djokovic posters with his Head racquets. One would be tempted to ask whether…
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Loss making airlines and profitable aggregators
The Indian skies are witnessing a strange situation. Most of the carriers who form the backbone of Indian aviation industry are suffering from huge operating losses – from a combined effect of lower ticket pricing and increasing fuel costs – or so they claim. The ticket selling sites like MakeMyTrip,Yatra etc on the other hand…
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Education Industry – next set of challenges
Private sector, higher education in India has probably seen a complete cycle of sorts in the last 8-10 years. What started as a gold rush with students willing to pay super premium amounts to get a MBA/Engg/Medical degree, now seems to have hit a major reality check. Institutes are now finding it difficult to get…
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Going the last mile in integrated advertising
Just came back from a Mahindra showroom here in NOIDA. Its a mess out there with the much hyped launch of XUV 500. There were almost 6 guys trying to check out each of the 3 pieces of this new toy that Mahindra claims will put them in a truely global league. And looking at…
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Change and how we react to it
Its an oft repeated statement that an optimist see opportunities where others see challenges. It can not be truer in a business scenario esp when something changes drastically in the overall environment. One such change has been the TRAI’s gag over SMS- the true bane of India’s mobile growth. We used to get 20 SMS…